A blog of the interesting and the unseen

drawing

(I just tagged this post as “fun”. Seriously, Tess?)
(But I wouldn’t say I’m doing so bad. After all, this is my FIFTH post this year so far. Considering that I didn’t post last year until Februray 15th, I’m doin’ great. *looks haughtily at those coordinated people who treat their blogs like actual websites and not end-of-the-pipeline imagination dumping grounds*)

Welcome to Issue One of my 2018 Art Dumps (of which most are yet to be made), in which I show you a bunch of pictures you never asked to see and expect you to know how much blood, sweat, graphite and tears went into them. Stick around until the end and you might see something resembling actual talent.

I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, I guess. I have been making improvements. It hasn’t been quick or easy, but I’m getting there. However, I have had my fair share of creeping myself out with strange facial expressions that are a result of bad proportions. (We’ll get to a nice example of that, too.)

The other thing to note is that when I scanned these in, I could barely see the lines, so I had to adjust the brightness and contrast and all that fun. The result is that the background is almost always grey. Oh well, it’s easier on the eyes anyways.

So, without further adieu,

let’s get into it!

(Disclaimer: These are in no particular order, are sometimes kind of cringey and weird looking, and are by no means professional artwork. I’m self taught so yeah.)
(Disclaimer 2: If I catch you stealing any of my artwork I will not hesitate to call you out on it. I mean not like you’d wanna steal it, but just in case you think it’s good enough. XD)

In general my art is 75% wolves and 25% everything else. I’m intrigued to say that it’s not the same case here. The breakdown is 62.5% wolves, 34% humans, and 7% horses. (I calculated carefully, but somehow it adds up to 103.5%. We’ll say that extra 3.5% is eraser shavings.

The reason I haven’t drawn as many wolves as I usually do is because I’ve been animating wolves for that MAP thing I’m doing. (I mean, after spending an hour doing nothing but drawing wolves, I’m not really in the mood to draw any more wolves.) But I have done quite a few – including a series I call Fifteen Wolf Sketches.

F.W.S. came out of a flashcard project I had to do for my Hebrew class. We were supposed to draw pictures on one side and write vocabulary words on the other. My teacher was really miffed at me because I took wayyyy too long to do these, but I think the result was worth it. Let’s go!

For the vocabulary word for “river”. I’d never drawn a wolf doing this so this was a ton of fun.

To descend. Yup, they’re going down quickly – imho, the top one is to die for. LOOK AT HIS LITTLE FEETS.

To take. My sister got so disturbed by the rabbit, it was funny.

To put.

To be pregnant. The passage we’re doing is the first chapters of Exodus, so yep, we gotta learn all the words. *awkward smile*

WOOK AT TEH BEBES. THEY’RE TINY BOLLS OF FLOOF.
Ahem. To nurse.

To go up. This ended up being one of my favorites.

To come. Conversely, this is one of my least favorites.

To draw water. Hey, I don’t think I did so bad, seeing as I couldn’t use any references at all for this. XD

To drink. Well, a form of drinking, anyways. This one is more of the passive version to drink.

To, erm, give birth. Yeah, I wasn’t going to draw that exactly, so I just drew this puppeh meeting his daddy. Awwwwwe….

To see. Her eyebrows are like, not there. Not the best of the bunch.

To stand.

To call. I think I’ve drawn this drawing five times over. It doesn’t get old, though.

To walk. Ahhh, I saved the best of these sketches for last. Here’s my wittle OC Archer, with leg positions that are SPOT ON. Ahhhh.

And now we enter the realm of the Epic Sketchbook. I really need to give him a name – if anyone has any suggestions, I’d appreciate it. He’s enormous and has taught me a lot about drawing large.

Here’s the first drawing I did in him – sort of like a christening. I wish I’d put more definition in his ears but he’s cute.

I am quite proud of this. It took soooooo long (like, three hours) from start to finish, but it’s so worth it. I’m so happy to have this in my sketchbook because it actually has color and makes me look like a pro. XD

A random horse! Haha. I do still love horses. I just don’t draw them as often as I used to. In reality, they’re incredibly hard to draw and pose. But this is proof that I still do it – and I stepped out of my usual outlining style and did soft colored pencil around everything.

In speaking of horses, here’s a partially colored cab. His gait looks subdued but meh, it’s okay. That cab was very hard to draw, and as a result the sizing is a little skewed, but it’s not noticiable if you’re just glancing (which you probably are ;))

This driver looks quite dapper, lap blanket and all. What a shame that I never colored him.

I suppose this also goes under the heading of horse-human drawings. I was interested in drawing humans at this point, but a little under-referenced. But it isn’t exactly easy to use references in a hotel room, which is where I did this. Because of this, we’ll ignore the fact that her horse has no near rein, her head is tiny in comparison to her shoulders, she looks like she’s about to fall asleep, and the stray lines on the bottom. Oh well.

I had grand dreams for this drawing. I was going to completely shade it and make it look wonderful. But I suppose I sort of lost interest. It’s at this point a scrap that needs finishing.

These buildings, though, are pretty awesome.

(ignore the drawing on the back please. this was finished while I was just doodling.)

A little bit of human-wolf affection. Awe. My human bodies are half-decent. They’ll certainly work for now. I have the ability to convey a lot of poses using the top-secret method I use. My faces, though, leave a lot to be desired. I hide them a lot of the time with hair or other things, because when I draw them they end up looking like this a lot of the time:

This is a bona fide Tess mess up! I dubbed her Lolina (not sure why?) and she looks like a nutcracker. The effect is worse than my scanner makes it. THOSE TEETH, WHAT HAPPENED.

It was after dear Lolina that I decided to not draw lips at all. After a bunch more like her, human faces started to make a bit of sense.

I’ve found that profiles are the easiest to draw. It’s all in the nose. And hair is quite easy now that I’ve been practicing. I will admit that I draw most men’s hair in a certain way. It’s not the way I particularly like it, it’s just the way I’ve found that it’s easiest to draw.

When I took the pictures for this post, this drawing was only half-done. I’ve finished it since then. (These are Nano charries :D) I really liked the facial proportions here. After I finish faces, tho, the next battle will be clothes. Because I can’t draw clothes right now to save my life and so everyone wears about the same thing.

(I added the captions. Any guesses as to who these are?)

I thought this turned out pretty good. We’ve got a few issues with the eyes/skintones but it’s pretty decent. Closeups:

Kaori

I think they’re pretty good.

Beofre we get to the last, best one, here’s a scrap:

Hey, his hair is slightly different. Whaddaya know. (This is supposed to be Robin from Ettiquette and my other nano. :D)

Now.

I always save the best for last, as you know, and so I present to you another Nano charrie drawing that came kind of out of nowhere. It’s not even in the big sketchbook. But here we go:

This is that post that comes in between all of everyone’s exciting posts that no one will probably read because everyone else is making much more awesome posts. Oh well, here goes.

Zielle gave me some questions as part of her “Guest Interviews” thang, and so that’s the first order of business. Who doesn’t love to answer questions about oneself?

Zielle: What brought you to name your blog ‘Steeplechase’?

Tess: Oh wow, these questions are personalized! Epic. I had always loved the word, and I thought it reflected the random nature of my blog without being “Tessie’s Random Crazy Stuff Blog!!”

Zielle: How was your blog born? Who/what inspired you to start one?

Tess: Well, I had already made an AG doll blog (still running, btdubs), but I found a bunch of posts that weren’t AG related were falling through the cracks, so I bucked up and made a PB. And now I love it.

Zielle: What quote do you live by if any?

Tess: Literally anything that Winston Churchill said. In particular:

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” (used in the literal sense of the word, btw)

Okay, that wasn’t one quote. That was five. Bad Tess. *spanks hand*

Zielle: Who are some bloggers you look up to or who inspire you?

Tess: I look up to anyone who’s been blogging longer than I have – Madi and Hayley in particular. As for inspiration, my inspiration comes from all of my followers, all of the people I follow, any random visitors that stop by – in short, every blogger is an inspiration to me.

Zielle: What are some of your blogging goals for the year 2018?

Tess: Finish what I start XD. I have five random drafts in my folder right now and I need to get better at that. Make a two-minute animation for you guys to enjoy. I also want to get to one hundred followers. But that’s just a selfish wish. I don’t even have 50 :P.

Zielle: Are you just naturally good at drawing, or did you have to learn?

Tess: *thinks*Big Important Drawing Rule One:There is no such thing as natural talent. There is such thing as extensive practice. I’ve been actively drawing since I could scribble. My mom always nurtured me by providing clean paper to draw on and good tools to draw with.

Big Important Drawing Rule Two:Copy. Hold it! There’s a difference between copying and plagiarism. Go to Google, search what you want to draw, and pull up an image. Now draw it as best you can. Think about what it would look like as a coloring page. Also, try to draw from life as much as possible. If you can’t draw from life, then watch someone else draw what you want to draw. Steer clear of ‘drawing tutorials’, though, because those will teach you how to draw that thing in the creator’s style. Not good. You want your own style.

Big Important Drawing Rule Three:Be unique. Do things your way, not someone else’s. That’s the only way your drawings will look like YOU.

Big Important Drawing Rule Four:Block. If you want to be able to draw something from every angle, learn to block. Go look it up. Art Ala Carte is a great Youtube channel for learning how to block.

Tess: Only once. I didn’t get a window seat though. So that kind of stunk.

Zielle: Do you stall reading until you’re in bed, or do you read whenever youcan?

Tess: It all depends on what I’m reading. If a book is meh or average or not really that interesting, I wait till bed. But if it’s so enthralling that I can’t wait to see what happens next and can’t put it down, then I read it whenever I can (including while getting dressed).

Zielle: How old were you when you wrote your first story? (if you’re okay sharing)

Tess: I was nine. I wrote out a story about bunnies that now, remembering it, sounds mysteriously like Alice in Wonderland…even though I hadn’t read it at the time. I sadly don’t have it anymore. 😦

Zielle: Do you have a book in progress that I can beta read and devour???!! ;P

Tess: Almost. Once I make my Julynowrimo Brother Robin cohesive (not perfect, mind you), you’ll be the first on the list of beta readers!

In speaking of which, I am hiring beta readers! I need some useful crit on the aforementioned story.

Beta Reader Information

– The story is fifty thousand words long and falls under the heading of sci-fi histfict.
– The content is appropriate for ages 8+. There is mention of death, some people in love, and an injury, which is not described in great detail. (EDIT: There is also mention of alchoholic beverages. Not a horrible lot but they are present. This is 1876, guys.)
– The story is a DRAFT. It is not my best work. It is not even close to my best work. It’s complete rubbish, drivel and garbage. But I don’t want to waste a bunch of time editing and fixing a story that will need more fixing later.
– I’ll be sending out the story in December of this year, after I’ve made it cohesive (going back and fixing things that don’t make sense.
– I really don’t want grammar criticism. I’ll fix that m’self, thanks. If something’s not clear, then tell me, but if I use the wrong form of ‘there’, don’t correct me, please.

Can I have a name?(required)

I'll need your email to send you the story.(required)

Do you have a blog?

Anything you wanna say?

I’m looking for at least five readers, so jump on it!

And now…the ‘stuf’…the reason why I haven’t been blogging…there’s so much interesting stuff to do and so little time! I’ve gotten some new things that I can’t wait to show you guys.

Books!

One trip to Barnes and Noble later…I got some books! The money was worth it.

Wreck This Journal. Guys. This is so so so so so awesome! I’m not going to show any pages until I’m done. Then I’ll do a #rekt tour!

And F nish Th s B k. I am not going to say anything about this one. You have to go get it yourself. Not being lazy, it’s just that you have to see it to believe it.

The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle is a crazy book that takes itself really seriously. Like it’s completely normal to shave yourself with a broken bottle, Doctor! But it’s a ton of fun and really lighthearted in comparison to a lot of fiction.

The best part, though, is that my collection of aesthetically pleasing Sterling edition classics is growing!

Ahhhhh….the spectrum….it’s so……

SATISFYING.

*wipes brow*

Art Stufs

Alright, I broke down and bought a sketchbook. I haven’t drawn anything in it yet, but that will change as soon as I finish this post. 🙂 I also got some new pencils, as I wore my others down to nubs…

And they are also fun to photograph. This is the 6B (not like anyone cares).

And now….

…the grand finale…

…the thing you’ve been waiting for…

…please welcome…

…the newest member of my entourage…

…the one who will help me realize my dreams…

This is Cedric! He is a Monoprice 10″ x 6.25″ Drawing Tablet and is a real amazing guy (though he can be tempermental). Don’t tell him I said that, though. I got some old Flash MX2004 and am making some babystep animations. But that topic’s for another post.

What’s your favorite thing to do (besides blogging)? Did you sign up to beta read?

To begin, I want to thank you guys for all the sweet comments related to yesterday’s drawing. They just really made my day.

Now, for what you have been waiting for…

…the most epic art dump of 2017…

…28 pages of good drawings…

…including a minor change in style…

…You’re excited, aren’t you?…

…Ready?

from giphy

Part One: Before The Style Change

Some people. I’m getting better aren’t I?

(A lot of these will be kind of grey because I had to lower the brightness to get the lines to show.)

I will leave you to decide whether this is a wolf or a horse.

Hand holding a hot dog? I did attempt to shade.

Stargazing wolfos (not inspired by The Lion King II at all….;)) This is really adorable, but the white wolf looks like a bear. 😦

An epic tree.

Part Two: The Switch

I got into a drawing slump after drawing the two stargazing wolves. I couldn’t get my wolves to look like they had any dimension. Out of desperation, I looked up some wolves from the second Balto movie. Just to get some ideas.

Yeah, they aren’t bad.

Not bad at all, actually. But something about them lacked what my drawings usually have. I identified it as the eyes. It always bugs me when animals are drawn/animated with whites in their eyes. There is such thing as an expressive eye without whites. So I experimented…

Hmmm…

Not bad. (I was thinking about lip syncing here.)

You know, I actually like it! It balances cartoonability and realism, and considering that I draw for the purpose of animation, I decided to stick with it.

So I worked further, seeing if it could be translated into a pup form.

(The big blur underneath covers up possibly the creepiest drawing ever. You should be thankful I covered it up.)

Awww.

I like the style because I’m able to communicate an incredible amount of expression into it.

This comes from the animatic I am working on right now. Here are some other shots from it.

Any guesses as to what it could be about?

Yes, I definitely am keeping with this style. It helps give them dimension and looks the same from all angles.

blogfriends (pl. n.) – Friends made through the blogosphere that become far more than entities as time progresses.

I’ve met some awesome people in the fourteen months that I’ve been blogging. Every single one of my followers is special to me, and there’s nothing that cheers me up better than when one of them leaves me a comment or a like.

I wanted to try to find a way to thank some of my best blogfriends ever; namely, Mya, Enni, Miles, Sam, Clara, Zielle and Ava. Everyone has been super-supportive, but these seven in particular have really helped me along. I could not write enough to suffice for the inspiration I’ve gotten from them.

I shall now go through each one separately, both telling them how awesome they are and critiquing my rendition (because this can’t get too mushy).

(DISCLAIMER: Distance to or from Tess does not indicate frenship status. If I could have put all you beans right next to me, I would have.)

Mya, you’re an underdog of the blogging world, and you’re totally okay with that. You’re still under 100 followers, but you put together beautiful photos and excellent writing. The result? Posts I always look forward to reading. You’re a bit soft-spoken in comparison to others, but that’s one of the reasons I like you so much. Keep peacing out the world.

(Art critique: I wish I had made her smile a little less wide. Less like this: ) and more like this: >. Other than that, Mya turned out pretty good!)

Enni, you horse nerd, we have so much in common! It’s so refreshing to see a blogger who loves her older brothers as much as I love mine. And our horsiness…we should not have coffee together. Caffiene and geeking may have adverse effects upon our riding posture. But it might be worth it. Keep dreaming – we will ship Bristy soon enough.

(Art critique: I only had a rather blurred-out photo to work with, so hopefully my imagination filled in adaquately.)

Miles miles miles miles miles….remember when we were at the Pottery and I was voted the weirdest girl because of my evil scientist impression? If we were to compete again, you would take the cake, you silly jelly bean. But hey, are you really complaining about that? I can see you doing all kinds of awesome stuff. You hack it out, bubble.

(Miles and I are IRL frens, so this makes no sense to anyone but her and I. :P)

(Art critique: How do you put a crazy unicorn like Miles into a drawing? Hot pink shirt, emoji hat, orange Toms and weird socks, of course. My original design had her giving me bunny ears. Though it would have been more accurate, it was causing problems relating to arm length. I mean, she’s cray, but not stretchy…)

(And we respectfully skip Tess because this is not the time for a session of heavy self-lauding. :P)

Sammy, you’re so smol it’s hard to not smile when I see one of your posts. You’re one of the few real booknerds I trust to know the difference between a good book and kindling. And your doll blog. INSANE. How do you do that? You’re epically awesome and you should keep being epically awesome. Finis.

(And…I tried include your swanfriend but his inflatable feathers would have been too hard to draw. And it would have looked really, REALLY weird.)

(Art critique: Sam is probably the most interesting to look at out of all the beans, considering she’s the only one not looking a the cam…I know your hair isn’t THAT red but I wanted it to be more red than – shall I dare say it? – ORANGE.)

Clara! My first follower! The one I addressed all this drivel to for the first few weeks! I’ve been following you ever since I started ‘pressing, so this frenship wins the Longevity Award. Don’t ever stop being that frendly, sweet, colorful bean you are. Just don’t.

(Art critique: If only I could capture Clara’s frenliness in a drawing…*sighs* The panda is a reference to what was her profile picture for a long, long, long, LONG time. I wanted to give Constance a nametag but there wasn’t enough room!)

Zielle, Zielle, I always wished my name had started with an awesome letter like Z. But not Zebedee. Your blog is so awesome! I love your photos and writing, and since those translate to your soul, I love your soul you so much! I know that my chances of meeting you in person are really, REALLY slim, but we can dream across the Pacific, right? Keep it up!

(Art critique: I love the way Zielle turned out. Except for her skin. I had intended to make it only a bit darker, because she said she was epically Filipino, but…I think I went overkill. Let’s just say she got a lot of sun this summer. :/)

Ava, you and I were born under the same star. Yes, talking to characters is normal. Yes, feeling that your characters are real is normal. Yes, developing crushes on historical fiction characters is normal (even though people say that they aren’t real, and even if they were, they’d be dead). We could do this all day. Continue writing histfict, continue getting in deep with your characters…continue being Ava, because you are awesome awesome awesome.

(Art critique: I took a gander with Ava’s clothes. Hopefully they match her character. But I thought daydreaming required daydreamy clothes. Tess, what do you know about fashion? You wear your jeans until they turn grey and get holes in the rear. You wear your T-shirts until they get so nasty no one can tell what’s on them. You wear Target sneakers that kind of look like Converse but not really. And you own a pair of corduroy pants. Be ashamed for ever thinking you knew anything about fashion. Ahem. Ava, show all of us sneaker-wearing hoodlums how to wear flats, please?)

And this concludes my 1,000-word epic on you guys. Even if you were not mentioned, I love you so much. Thanks for the great year so far, and let’s hope for lots more epic years!

Grab my button!

What I’m Reading…

AKA Dickens Tells A Story But Not Really Because Half The Book Is Him Yammering On About Some Miniscule Detail.

I’m traumatized rn because this Tarzan is wayy more savage than the Disney one. I’m also traumatized because this one weighs in at almost 800 pages. Wow.

THE book for animators. It’s very entertaining but is PACKED with info.

99 cents at Goodwill. Hey, why not?

I began reading this one on a campout. Finished CotW but still working on WF. Note: do not read while sleeping outside in the vacinity of coyotes. You will find that many unpleasant thoughts show themselves and freak you out.